


Relapse

by TacitlyLeaps



Series: Long Road [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Bullying, Child Death, Comfy after the Edgy, Dissociative Identity Disorder, It's gonna come off as edgy, Magic, Post-Pacifist Route, Relapse, Sleepy Cuddles, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 22:00:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5432333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TacitlyLeaps/pseuds/TacitlyLeaps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frisk gets jumped on by some extreme bullies and ends up hospitalized. Asriel has a twisted way of coping with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relapse

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on /utg/ via Pastebin.

Frisk suddenly forgot everything that had happened between leaving school for home and ending up face-down in the pavement. Their ears ringing, their whole world spinning. The kid's head felt numb and tingling, vision blurred, sense of balance completely messed up. It felt like Frisk was in a rollercoaster.

Frisk could barely hear laughter through the deafening ringing in their ears, arms like wet noodles as someone pulled their backpack off. It was getting harder and harder to think, and whatever mental faculties the kid still had running were trying to figure out why the pavement felt so hot and wet against their face. 

Then everything started to hurt, pain crashing against their mind like a tsunami. It made the human seize up, a broken cry of agony gurgling out of Frisk's throat before something impacted against the back of their head, mashing their face against the pavement, consciousness fading before Frisk could LOAD. 

*** 

Toriel was in tears as she listened to the phone, a hand over her muzzle, cheeks pale from shock. Asriel was standing in the doorway, rubbing his tired eyes, the little goat child having stayed home thanks to a mild fever. It took a moment for his floppy ears to start picking up traces of the conversation between his mom and whoever she was talking to. With each word, his heart sunk, fever-induced drowsiness quickly replaced with horror.

Mom turned to look at him, gasping as she noticed her son, not having realized he'd been listening in on her. She rushed to the other room, still on the phone, not wanting Az to see her like this. Asriel just stood there, frozen, wondering if he was still asleep and this was a nightmare.

Toriel returned a minute later, having collected herself to appear as strong as she could for her son, still looking very much terrified.

“Frisk's in the hospital.”

*** 

Asriel had a devastated look on his face as he looked at Frisk lying there, on the sterile hospital bed. Frisk had a huge amount of bandages wrapped around their head, barely any skin showing from under them, blotches of blood staining the white strips of cloth. Mom was standing by Frisk's bedside, holding one of the human's hands in both paws, the large boss monster shivering lightly, fighting off bursting into incoherent sobbing. 

He felt achingly hollow on the inside. An eerily familiar coldness began to pour into the emptiness within him, from the depths of his mind. The terrified look began to twist into a warped, hollow-eyed smirk. His sockets were becoming black pools with a single dot of white in them, the teeth and flesh of his partially open maw replaced by dark, featureless void. Without a word, he slipped away from the room, heading out of the hospital. 

Frisk had never hurt anyone. Frisk was always there for him, keeping him safe, filling him with confidence. Frisk was the beacon of hopes and dreams that Asriel could always navigate to whenever he slipped into a dark place.

Now that beacon of light was dimmed by bloodied bandages, the light barely flickering from beneath a cracked, broken shell. 

And he knew exactly who had done this to his sibling. They had tried something like this before, to others. 

Asriel would make sure they would never hurt anyone again.

*** 

“Howdy!” 

The group of older kids, some human, some monster, turned to look at the goat child. The five punk-looking kids always hung out at one of the more remote, rundown playgrounds around this time. They were the reason the normal kids' parents told their children to avoid playing there.

“I'm Asriel! Asriel Dreemurr!”

The kids gave each other amused looks. The ones they shot Asriel's way looked outright predatory, as if he was a stray lamb who had wandered too far from the herd. They were painfully stereotypical school bullies – tough clothes, buzzcut or messy hair, a year or two older than their targets. Bigger than their prey, and always moving in a pack. Asriel could notice some things that belonged to Frisk being shared between them.

“Y'know, brother of Frisk Dreemurr? Whom you beat to a pulp two hours ago?”

That really got the bullies' interest. Like wolves, they were approaching Asriel, some of them clearly moving to flank him for when things would get physical. 

“Shit, you're related to that freak?” The biggest of them, clearly the 'alpha' of the pack, asked. The lanky kid easily towered over Asriel, but the goat wasn't budging. The bullies were standing a few feet from him, staring him down, laughing and making nasty comments about the goat kid wearing a green-yellow striped sweater and dark blue jeans. 

Asriel's smile didn't even flinch. Either he had nerves of steel, expression not faltering even in the face of an imminent beating, or then the goat was a particularly dumb kid.

“Golly! The doctors said Frisk can't eat anything solid for weeks! You guys really did a number on my best friend!”

One of the monster kids kicked some dust and dirt his way. Asriel didn't flinch. He had that textbook friendly smile plastered onto his muzzle. Somehow, it looked almost… like plastic, not real.

Before the boss kid's gob opened again, an aura of floating, ivory white, opals appeared in the air around Asriel's body. It was like he was standing under an archway made of glowing, slowly spinning, pellets. The group of bullies looked at them with mixed confusion and awe.

“These are...” He trailed off, trying to think of a convincing lie. It had been a while since he had done this. “Magical reward gems, for winners!” If I give you these, you'll leave my best friend alone, right?” Asriel said, the slowly rotating ovals drifting towards the bullies. A couple of the more brave ones grabbed a pellet for themselves, examining the shiny, magical things. Their cold surface felt smooth like glass against their fingers. Some of the older kids seemed reluctant, even stepping back from the eerie floaty things.

Asriel realized he had to butter them up, just a little longer. “Oh! They're worth a lot! That's because they're only given for the strongest, the best, of people!” He explained with a gleeful tone. It swayed a few more of them into grabbing a 'magical gem' for 'winners', rewards for beating the most determined kid in the world. They probably didn't even know who Frisk was, or then they were just that dumb - beating up someone related to royalty was a very, very bad idea.

None of them had noticed that Asriel's gleeful, dumb smile had taken a turn for worse, slowly on its way to a grin. He had reeled his prey in, and he no longer cared to hold up the facade of a dumb goat nerd. Some of the more audacious bullies were stuffing the pear-sized pellets into their pockets and bags.

The bullies holding onto the pellets screamed. The glowing white ovals had turned from cold to searing hot. They tried dropping them, but the white hot pellets remained floating in place. The bullies that had stuffed some in their pockets were less successful in their attempts at getting them off their bodies.

The smell of burning cloth and skin filled the air.

Asriel's eyes were pools of black with tiny dots of white in the middle, a jagged grin looking like it was a tear in reality leading to an infinite cold void.

“You IDIOTS.”

More pellets of raw magic appeared in the air. First tens, then hundreds, the numbers finally nearing a thousand. They surrounded the screaming humans and monsters, blocking them from escaping. 

“You hurt the one person who tried to teach me I was wrong.” Asriel's now ethereal-sounding voice snarled, dripping with raw, unfiltered malice, needle-like teeth appearing in the darkness that made up his leering, growing grin. The pellets surrounding the bullies were spinning faster and faster, as if revving up, making the kids panic and scream for their lives. 

“When I said...”

The barely teenaged kids were being pelted my magical projectiles hotter than glowing steel. Kidney-sized bullets impacting against their frail bodies with sickening snaps and pops. 

“In this world, it's kill or BE killed.”

The first of the children's souls left their corporeal forms, slowly floating up, then shattering. A gust of wind spread dust around the playground.

Asriel simply stood there, like a statue, as a disgusting smirk crept onto his face.

“Die.”

*** 

Consciousness was returning to Frisk. It still hurt, but now the child was more groggy from painkillers than stunned by pain. Their eyes had swollen shut, but Frisk could just and just hear Toriel talking to a police officer in the hospital room. Something about whether she knew anyone who could have done this. She sounded devastated.

Before Frisk took any more of it in, the beaten child pressed LOAD, ending everyone's suffering.

*** 

Frisk woke up, heart racing, cold sweat all over their body. The human looked around frantically. They were home, in their shared bed with Asriel. The clock that had been there since always ticking loudly, the air a bit musty like it always was, dim moonlight shining through the curtains.

Frisk could feel Asriel shift and move. They turned to look at him just as he was sitting up, rising with almost mechanical precision, as if in a trance. 

Asriel's face looked like it was melting. His eyes were gone, replaced with empty, black sockets, a jagged, leering grin made of shadow stretching from ear to ear, looking like it was about to split his head in half.

Frisk panicked for a few seconds, motionless, staring at that horrifying expression. Once they snapped out of it, the human pulled their goat brother into a tight, desperate embrace. 

Asriel's body felt cold. His fur felt fake, like that of a stuffed toy's. Lifeless.

But, as the minutes passed, Frisk could feel a spark within Asriel. A small, flickering flame which was spreading slowly, fighting against the freezing cold. Frisk's love was like kindling to it, helping it burn brighter until it was roaring, melting the black ice that the core of his being was buried under.

It took him the longest while to realize that he was in his own bed, being squeezed by his sibling instead of standing in the middle of a gritty playground, repeating the sins of his father, reliving old memories.

It was Frisk's sobbing that really started to bring him back. The wicked, malicious grin first turning neutral, then into a frown, his regular mouth gradually materializing. 

“Kill… Or be...” 

He emptied his lungs with a deep sigh, as if letting all the bad out of him. It was as if he had taken a deep breath and forgotten to let it out all this time. The full realization of what he had just done was dawning upon him. Asriel tried to cry, but his body refused, too exhausted to muster more than a few strained sobs and tears. Asriel felt dead tired, going limp in Frisk's arms, a narrow trail of tears going down each cheek. “Frisk? I think did a bad thing...” 

Frisk just shook their head, face buried in Asriel's neck fluff. It felt soft and real, the skin hidden beneath it very warm, muscles relaxed. He was breathing again, sharing warmth with Frisk instead of robbing it. Alive.

The exhausted goat's paws weakly wrapped around Frisk, tugging on their sibling to get them to lie down. The two kids slumped back down on the bed, the increasingly drowsy Asriel pulling the sheet up to their necks. Frisk still clung tightly to the warm, fluffy goat kid, and probably would until the morning. Frisk had feared they had lost Asriel, and the trauma from the beating was still fresh in their mind. Their brother's fleecy, warm fuzz feeling so pleasant and comforting, a tired and cute “Baa...” coming from Az as Frisk's fingers clutched a tuft of fur a touch too tightly. 

Frisk had picked up a habit of making a SAVE point in the middle of the night, when they were comfortably huddled together in the bed. If anything terrible happened during the day, it was a fine point to restart things from. 

“Ni ni, Frisk...” Asriel mumbled, yawning widely, drifting to sleep. What both of them had gone through in the future-that-no-longer-was had been extremely draining, neither of them able to stay awake longer than a few minutes after the LOAD. They could sort through what they had experienced in the morning – and prepare for the day accordingly. 

*** 

Frisk dodged the shove that the kid behind them had tried. The group of bullies were caught surprised by how deftly the human kid moved, even more about the fact that they had anticipated their ambush. Frisk spun around, a determined look on their face.

“Wh-! Give us your stuff, nerd!” The biggest of the bullies commanded, flustered. Apparently she had been the one trying to jump on Frisk, and was now earning surprised looks from her group at having failed her assault.

[ACT]

*Check

A troubled soul with low self-esteem that just wants to feel accepted.

Frisk dodged the flurry of punches that the boss bully threw their way. “Fff-! Stand. Still. Nerd!”

[ACT]

*Flirt

**Author's Note:**

> Shout-out to Reset and Motif for doing editing work. Go give those guys' stuff a read and kudos, they write great things and are good people all around.


End file.
